It would be nice if all it took to succeed in business was to be good at what you do. The reality of the matter is that no matter how good you are at your chosen profession, if no one knows about or sees what you can do than it just does not matter. That is essentially why the self storage industry and other businesses advertise. [More]

Self storage operators are always looking out for new innovations to improve their business. Lately that has centered around web technology, such as improving a ranking on search engines, implementing a social media presence or hooking up with an online booking search engine. But sometimes operators need only look at the basic elements of their self storage facility to make improvements. A rising star on the self storage scene is hinged and sealed doors replacing the traditional roll-up doors. [More]

Clutter has a way of creeping into everyone’s lives. Piles of paperwork stack up, mounds of books overflow off the bookcase and old shoes crowd closets. “I buy, therefore I am” is a Western way. But experts agree clutter is not just an eye sore; it can also be detrimental to one’s health. Clutter can be a big trigger for stress and can affect peace of mind, especially when coming home to a vision of unsightly chaos. [More]

When people go in to business, it is not uncommon to hear them say that they want to be the best at what they are doing and will become the No 1 in the land at their chosen specialty. As lofty and worthy a goal as it is, it does not matter a whole lot if people still don’t know that you exist. How do you beat the guys with an inferior product and a bigger marketing budget? [More]

Next to getting bad news, there is probably one thing that most people would say that they absolutely hate to do—give bad news. In ancient Rome the message would often get killed for being the bearer of bad tidings. Thankfully, that is no longer an acceptable practice. However, that still does not make the task any easier. [More]

Sometimes the best advertising campaign comes from the heart. When a self storage facility reaches out to a community or embraces a cause, it sends a message that it cares, a message that resonates deeply with many people. And when those people someday need self storage, a familiar name will pop into their head. A name they will associate with a good feeling of caring and giving. [More]

The benefit of having an online self storage community is to share ideas, concerns and to debate topics relevant to the industry. Self-Storage Talk, the industry’s largest online community, has taken the concept a step further to include the sharing of documents and resources. [More]

“If you build it, they will come” is a mantra that became famous in a baseball movie, but is something that every small business owner is dying to believe. Rather than wait and see, they typically find some way to advertise whether it is in the community with flyers and/ or a billboard, city-wide with a radio ad, and/or regional to national with a television commercial. [More]

Humans, the curious, impatient creatures that they are, are always looking for some way to get ahead and figure out what is going to happen before it does. That is why the nation use to look at the Super Bowl winner to predict the winner of presidential elections and how the stock market will react. If we can find a way to know something before someone else we will use it. [More]

Self storage has caught the eye of commercial real estate investors with its impressive returns for 2010 and anticipated continued success for 2011. Publicly-traded self storage real estate investment trusts (REITs) yielded total returns of about 30 percent in 2010, faring better than the broader REIT sector and more than doubling the average total return for companies traded on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. [More]